Whatever happened to TruForm?

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon' started by Amilo-D, Feb 4, 2007.

  1. Amilo-D

    Amilo-D Master Guru

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    I was browsing my old ati demo cd and found 8500 dolphin demo.

    Now i installed it and to my surprise it didnt work. Said something about missing Npatch support.

    Anyone knows what happened to TruForm technology? Why is it not supported/used anymore in games?
     
  2. dukedave5200

    dukedave5200 Ancient Guru

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    The 8500 had the first and only ATI hardware accelerated tessellation engine called "Truform" which could add polygons to 3D models and smooth them out. The technology required developer support though and was not well supported; unfortunately "Truform" was not ideal for all 3D rendering scenarios and had a tendency to round out objects undesirably. TruForm hardware wasn't included in future ATI GPUs, but was still supported. Future chips either performed Truform in software on the host system's CPU, or as a vertex shader program, neither of which were as efficient as 8500's Truform unit.
     
  3. Freedom Eclipse

    Freedom Eclipse Guest

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    the 9700Pro supported true form i remember it b4 i swapped the fan off for an 'ULTIMATE EDITION' body mod (heatpipe cooler) from a 9800pro ultimate edition somebody GAVE to my DAD (f**king wa*ker!!!!) after i modded the 9700pro into an ultimate edtion I damaged the card. the GPU produced more heat then the heapipes to get rid of it (beats me as the clocks are slower then a 9800pro's) since it more or less fried itself. it still works but i get all these fuzzy lines when i boot up & the dispaly wont stablise. it just keeps f**king up in places so yeah.....end of that story. luckily that 9700pro was ina test system & I was running with an x850XT PE...sorted!
     
  4. 91LudeSiT

    91LudeSiT Master Guru

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    Yea ATi dropped support for truform as most games didn't make use of it.
     

  5. Cornelius

    Cornelius Master Guru

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    Vertex programs lack the ability to instance new vertices, so the tessellation itself has to be done in software. The only vertex programs we used were for morphing, so there wouldn't be any "popping" when new faces and vertices were tessellated.

    We've looked at Truform, and it wasn't robust and programmable enough. The demo was impressive, as well as the fact that some games actually supported it (RTCW for one). Unfortunately, Truform could only be used on a fixed-function pipeline (a fragment shader couldn't be run on "Truformed" surfaces). Because of this, ATI dropped Truform support from its DX9 hardware.

    Geometry shading allows tessellation to be performed in hardware though. And it's programmable and shader-friendly too.
     
  6. Terrorizor

    Terrorizor Ancient Guru

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    wow truform, that takes me back to a happy time in pc gaming, 9800pro ,return to castle wolfenstien with truform enabled and serious sam with npatches(for truform)enabled,that card is seriously imo,the best graphics card ever made in history, and the chrome gargoyle clock demos were just killer cool.
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2007
  7. Freedom Eclipse

    Freedom Eclipse Guest

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    the closest i came to true form was possibly 1 of the screen savers i got from either an ATi 9200 or 9700 drivers CD where it was a screensaver/demo of a moving sea (?!?!?! dunno if anybody remembers it) that screen saver was quite cool. shame i didnt copy it from the CD when i sold off my 9200pro ages ago *crys*
     
  8. CTman

    CTman Ancient Guru

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    I thought the newer ATI videocards got True-form 2.0.

    Also I thought the Trueform support is disabled in the default settings in the ATI control panel or CCC. If there's still an option for the Trueform, you may be able to enable it in the CP/CCC (if it's not grayed out e.g.) If there are no options for the Trueform in CP/CCC, you may be able enabling it via ati tool for the X1000 series (if the drivers still support it ofcourse).

    These are the games I have played which got True-form support when I got an athlon xp system with a radeon 9600xt in the past:

    Deus Ex (edit via ini.file);
    Morrowind (via FPSoptimizer tool);
    Neverwinter Nights (edit via ini.file);
    Rainbow Six: Ravenshield (edit via ini.file);
    Return to Castle Wolfenstein (edit via ini.file);
    Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 (edit via ini.file);


    Maybe other Guru's can add more "Trueform" game to the list from above.

    Some screenshots would be nice!
     
  9. Amilo-D

    Amilo-D Master Guru

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    Worry not my friend, ATI still have them on their site.

    It is called Ocean SmartShader ScreenSaver, v1.1 you can find it on this page

    I dont think that screensaved used truform, only DX8 pixel shaders.

    I remember Morrowind and Serious Sam working with npatches. I remember rocks and other small objects in morrowind looking much smoother with npatches enabled on my 8500LE card. Oh well, good old times :)
     
  10. Freedom Eclipse

    Freedom Eclipse Guest

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    thanks very much for that link :flip2:
     

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